New: Game Poems Magazine, a playable magazine for short-form videogames, featured in Edge.
“Game Poems provides unique guidance for those interested in exploring the poetic potential of videogames.”
— Jenova Chen, BAFTA-winning designer of Flow, Flower, Journey, and Sky: Children of the Light
Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice (Amherst College Press, 2023) is a deeply interdisciplinary look at the convergences between game making and lyric poetry. The book seeks to investigate what I have come to see as an important but neglected perspective on videogames—namely that they can operate as a kind of poetry apart from any reliance on linguistic signs or symbols—in a way that is theoretically and practically rigorous while remaining accessible to a broad audience. As a longtime proponent of open-source and access-for-all within the software space, publishing with an open-access press was important to me, and consequently Game Poems is available in open-access as well as print formats.
“Everyone who loves the true power of games will benefit from the treasure trove of insights in Game Poems.”
— Jesse Schell, game designer
& author of The Art of Game Design
“A concise, passionate articulation - and defence! - of an artistic space between poems and videogames.”
— Chris Bateman, game designer
& author of 21st Century Game Design
“Jordan Magnuson is one of a surprisingly small group of artists who see in the technology of videogames a versatile medium capable of expressing much more than conventional games.”
— Michaël Samyn, game designer:
Sunset, The Graveyard, and The Path
“With Game Poems, Jordan Magnuson provides a guide to constructing the next generation of personal and incisive games. ”
— Gregory Avery-Weir, game designer:
The Majesty of Colors and Looming